1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multifunctional machine, and particularly to a multifunctional machine which prevents the contamination caused by the contact of a document and a printhead, by placing the printhead to face a base frame supporting a printable medium and placing a scanner to face the base frame supporting the document.
Further, the present invention relates to a multifunctional machine capable of simplifying the structure and reducing the manufacturing costs, by sharing the base frame for supporting the printable medium and the document and by moving the printhead and the scanner using one driving motor.
2. Description of the Related Art
First, a printable medium, which is referred to in the specification indicates a medium capable of recording a predetermined information such as a printing paper.
Nowadays, office automation facilities such as a printer, a scanner, a duplicator, a facsimile, etc. have become widespread. To extend their own functions, these office automation facilities each having high efficiency have been developed. Accordingly, the manufacturing costs of the products increase and this may impose an economic burden on users. To solve the problem, by integrating the office automation facilities which have separately been used into a multifunctional device, the economic burden on users can be lessened.
Conventionally, the multifunctional machine includes a document scanning unit and a printing unit which separately perform the scanning and printing operations.
The multifunctional machine has a same path for transporting the document and the printable medium, and an image scanning sensor which is integrated at a high density is separately mounted at a printhead carriage housing. When scanning the document, an ink-jet printhead and the image scanning sensor perform the reciprocation on the document perpendicular to the document transporting direction, by means of a carriage motor along a carriage shaft. At this time, the image scanning sensor scans data from the document. After the scanning is completed once, the document is transported as much as a predetermined length by a document transporting motor. By repeatedly performing the above-described process, the document scanning is completed.
In the case of the multifunctional machine in which the image scanning sensor is attached to the printhead carriage housing, as the ink-jet printhead and the image scanning sensor move together, the surface of the document is always contacted with an ink injection unit of the printhead. As a result, when performing the scanning operation, as the ink is spread on the surface of the document due to the contact of the ink injection unit of the printhead and the surface of the document the image on the document can be damaged.
In the case that the interval between the printhead and the printable medium is larger than the interval between the image scanning sensor and the document, the ink injected on the printable medium which is not yet dry is contacted with the surface of the image scanning sensor, thereby causing a poor image quality.
Moreover, when picking up the document, as the surface of the document is contaminated by a pickup roller caused by the friction between the surface of the document and the pickup roller, the data on the document can be damaged.
To solve the above problems, a multifunctional machine which has two different paths for transporting the document and the printable medium, and drives the printhead and the image scanning sensor by means of different driving sources has been presented. However, as the separate driving sources are used to drive the printhead and the image scanning sensor and also to transport the printable medium and the document, the manufacturing cost increases and the space for setting up the machine becomes large.